


Trip Not On Mountains

by Adazzle



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Baby Yoda is Baby, Baby Yoda is Megamind - Freeform, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Found Family, Minor Character Death, Organized Crime, ok maybe i spelled migs mayfield wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:54:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28421286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adazzle/pseuds/Adazzle
Summary: Din Djarin, foster kid turned almost-cult member turned CIA reject turned elite mountaineer, moonlights as a smuggler to pay his bills. He just wants to finish building his cottage and retire but the mountains have other plans.Otherwise known as, the S1 survivalist AU that NO ONE asked for but I’m quarantined and reading about mountaineering so why not?
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	1. Nanga Parbat

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1 notes
> 
> Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.”  
> -Ralph Waldo Emerson
> 
>   
> 
> 
> [from Imgflip Meme Generator](https://imgflip.com/memegenerator)  
> 
> 
> ]" />. 

One day in the not so distant future, Din Djarin was going to finish his cottage in the Swiss mountains, pick up a last load of supplies from the village shop nearby, and never be seen or heard from again.

Until then, he was stuck leading Everest treks and complaining about amateurs with . Greef Karga, the only coworker who tolerated him. Razor Crest Adventures was not, strictly speaking, just a company of Wilderness Guides. But Din didn’t mind carrying an extra bag of luggage or two back home after his trips finished, and he was good enough to not get caught. People thought the Mandalorians were a cult, but really, they were just sneaky and looked at the world differently. That’s why he was so good at his job (s). Everyone thought he was weird because he never took his ski mask off, but they didn’t know the whole story.

He was thinking about the rooftop deck of his cottage (perfect for stargazing) as Greef handed him his paycheck. “This is half of it”. Greef rolled his eyes. “We only got five of them to summit, you lunatic. They only pay the bonuses if they make it to the top.” Din knew that, but it wasn’t much comfort as he thought about stretching the cash to cover international flights.

“Isn’t there a second group doing a short expedition tomorrow I could work?” “Cancelled.” Greef told him gruffly. “Two of them have altitude sickness”. “At Base Camp?” he swore. “Newbs”. Greef laughed and started to walk away. “Take another job if you want some more money, mate”. Din knew what job he was referencing, but he was already pushing what he was carrying back as is. If there was money to be made he’d have to find it elsewhere.

That night, as he sat smoking with the other guides, a short Sherpa clapped him on the shoulder. “Heard you’re looking for some extra cash.” “Where’d you hear that?” The Sherpa man glanced around to ensure no one was looking. “I’m aware of the many services Razor Crest offers, and I have a Client who would like similar services”. He leaned in close to whisper the price, and Din’s eyebrows rose as he considered. Three trips in one week. “What are the details?”. “You’ll be climbing Nanga Parbat and bringing some-cargo- back to Kathmandu. All climbing expenses covered” Din had never done a summit of Nanga Parbat but he’d done plenty of similar climbs.

“Where will I pick up the cargo?”

The Sherpa turned to walk away. “On the mountain”.

Two weeks later, Din was at Rakhiot Peak having the time of his life. He’d been given just enough time to visit an old friend from his childhood-the Armorer was always a good time-before he started the climb.

He took a last photo of Rakhiot Peak, then turned to continue. Somewhere distantly behind him, he heard a rock clatter downwards. He carefully turned around to catch sight of a slim, pale man clinging on to the rocks for dear life.

“Are you alright?” The man grimaced. “Does it look like I’m alright?”

Din glanced at the sun, calculating that he had just enough time to fix the mans’ dislodged crampons before he continued. He didn’t consider himself merciful, but it was an easy fix.

“Hey, wait!” the stranger shouted at him. He paused, just for a second. 

“Do you think we could climb together?”

He stared.

“I’ll be meeting up with my mentor, but we’re climbing separately at the beginning for individual meditation.”

Din sighed.

Solo climbers are often solitary (telling anyone this, Din would grin at the pun), but Din decided he could use the help. His new companion was Kuill, a local who was meditating as he climbed. He was bit annoying, but he’s a good source of information on the mountain. He’s summitted before. Or so he says. 

Kuill’s mentor was called IG, who seemed strange and almost robotic. They made the summit push easier though. Several times, their advice helped him narrowly avoid disaster. 

On the last day of the descent, he tried to shake them several times as they approached the crevice where the cargo was stashed. He’d wondered several times at the strangeness of hiding illegal artefacts on a mountain, but as long as they paid him he didn’t really care. 

“What are you looking for?” IG asked him as they prepared to make camp their last night on the mountain. “Nothing”, Din replied, starting to walk away. “I just want to meditate a bit myself before it’s dark.”

He ignored the calls of “I didn’t know you meditated?” and sprinted away.

He found the crevice, frantic to complete the task before sundown, just as he heard a coo.

“What the hell?” Before him was a tiny child-well, what he thought was a child. His skin was oddly tinted, almost green, but he didn’t seem sick. Din reached for the child. He didn’t seem underweight. He frantically rechecked his map. The cargo was supposed to be here.

Was the child the cargo?

He stood there, panicking for a minute, until the child cooed again.

“Din?” IG came towards him. When he saw the child in Din’s arms he swore loudly. “How-what-what is that?” “I don’t know.” Din told him. “I just found him here”. They stared at each other for a minute, and then IG said “You are working for the Client too?” 

This is the first time he’d been caught on a job. “No.” “Well don’t be stupid, they always hire two of us. All we have to do is deliver it back and they’ll do what they want with it.”

“It’s a child.” 

IG ran at him, but Din was faster.


	2. Lhotse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can't think of a good substitute for a Mud Horn, so I used a Death Stalker Scorpion, which looks creepy I guess?
> 
> Trigger Warnings for robbery and said scorpions
> 
> Apologies if you know more about A) mountaineering or B) Pakistani geography than I do and are mortally offended by inaccuracies

Din had never wanted to be a father.

He’d had too many other children to take care of in foster care, and it had hurt too much once the commune had disbanded. 

Now, filled with guilt after leaving two men to possibly die, even though they had wanted to kill-whoever-whatever the cargo was, he still wasn’t sure he’d made the right choice. They’d been wandering for a few weeks. He thought he was in Khumbu, maybe near Lhotse, but he wasn’t sure.

Din didn’t know much about the Child, but he could induce quite a bit about the Client. The types of cargo he carried varied quite a bit, but it was always very not -clean cut-above the board?-he didn’t care. In this part of the world the Client would likely be part of a ring. He occasionally worked jobs in Europe, where you might have an eccentric millionaire who wanted a particular artifact that they weren’t supposed to have, but here they would be organized.

The Child was harder to guess about. It seemed to be three or four with decent stamina, able to take care of itself, eat and sleep and bathe, but it always had strange skin pallor and he could never tell what race or ethnicity it was. It also didn’t speak. If he could make it back to the Armorer’s hideout she might be able to help him do some research but for now he had no idea.

For now, Din was tramping through villages wondering what he should do. If he found a good internet connection he could see which country-Nepal or Pakistan-had a better Child Protective Services program. 

Was it even a good idea to get the government involved? Maybe The Child had parents somewhere. Maybe they were involved in a rival ring.

He was interrupted in this line of thinking by the Child poking him. They were sleeping in a tent in a field somewhere. The air was crisp, and he could see the mountains. He liked it, flying under the radar, which was easy enough during tourist season.

“Hello?” he said, poking the Child back teasingly. It cooed at him. It was adorable. Where did this sudden morality come from?

The Child laughed. “Do you want to make breakfast?” Din said. He sat up and unzipped the tent door. At once, he heard a noise that sounded like a gun being cocked. They were face to face with a group of bandits.

Din had picked up a lot of languages in his life. The bandits didn’t bother trying to communicate with him verbally, they simply made a universal gesture for money.

“I don’t have any”. He said in Nepali, then broken Urdu, then English. The first bandit spat at him, then lunged. It never occurred to Din that they would want the child, but obviously they could see it peeking out behind him. He fought harder once he realized they were coming for the Child and the asking for money was simply to distract him.

Once Din had fought off three bandits, the other two began to retreat. One had managed to grab the Child before Din dropkicked him. “Are you alright?” Din asked the Child, who seemed strangely calm. He didn’t have money to bribe local officials. He needed to pack up his tent and get out of here. The Child seemed fine, it’s clothes were just a bit ruffled. Then he saw the tracking device on it’s foot.

Din swore. This was going to be harder than he thought.  
He decided to go back to Pakistan after that, simply because he had better (and by better, he meant less bribable) contacts there. They stayed for a bit in a larger city where he picked up some construction work. He saved up enough money to go to Chilas, where a friend of his had recommended an outreach center with a good social worker, and where Razor Crest sometimes held offices. They were starting the trek to the bus station when he thought someone might be following him. They were fast. As he began to change his route, someone stepped out abruptly in front of him, and everything went black.

When he woke up, he was in an alleyway somewhere. The Child was still there, but his rucksack was gone. He’d stashed the tent and his ice picks and crampons in the cheap flat they were staying in, but his other supplies and money were gone. The Child still seemed fine, so Din went back to the flat and rolled the cheap plastic toy ball he’d bought the Child back and forth across the floor, which entertained him endlessly, until he felt like he could breathe again.

The next day, Kuill showed up at his flat. “I know you think I should be dead, but I’m tougher than you think”, was the first thing he said. Din prayed the child would stay out of eyesight. “I have a job for you. It’s from a friend of mine, and although you left me to die I don’t know many people who can handle this” Kuill said. “IG isn’t a fan of you for some strange reason-” Din breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed Kuill didn’t know about the Child. “But I think you’ll work well for this.” 

The next day, Din disguised the Child as best he could and trekked out to the village Kuill had instructed him to go to. There was a Death Stinger Scorpion infestation he needed to take care of. Kuill was right-he had encountered several of them on CIA jobs. In the village, an elderly villager named Adeel gave him tea and then showed him to the outskirts of the village, where an empty, foul smelling hut awaited him. “We want them dead”, Adeel told him, and Din nodded. 

He’d bought a new rucksack with the advance that Kuill gave him, and the Child fit in it snuggly when it was unzipped slightly for breathing room. He set the rucksack down once Adeel had left, and told the Child to stay there and shout if he needed help, although he’d never heard it say anything louder than a joyful laugh. This would be quick enough, and he needed the money.

The scorpions were bigger than he should be. They seemed like mutants. He managed to kill a few, but then one came out of nowhere towards his hands, and he realized with a shock that the gloves he’d bought to replace what was lost in his stolen rucksack were far thinner than the should be. 

What would happen to the Child if he died? He didn’t have time to think about how strange that his first thoughts when facing death were of someone else and not his Swiss cottage, because at that very second, the scorpions started floating, immobilized.

He turned around slowly, heart pounding, to see the Child in the doorway.

He swore, took a deep breath, and swore again.

“Kid. What are you doing, kid?” The child cooed, pleased with itself.

It took a few minutes, but eventually Din numbly got rid of the scorpions, the Child laughing each time he did so. 

He blindly hiked back to the village and had a congratulatory cup of tea with Adeel. Then he went back to Chilas and Kuill, overjoyed his friends were safe, helped him buy a new camping stove and told him if he ever needed anything to not hesitate to call.

The Child remained happy playing with plastic balls and eating tiny bits of egg for breakfast while staring at the mountains in the distance.

Something strange was going on.


	3. K2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Din makes two choices.
> 
> Author’s notes: For context, the Chinese side of K2 is the harder climb.

One week after the incident with the scorpions, Din was out of money again.

It was basically already monsoon season and jobs were few and far between. He only had a tourist visa in Pakistan, and his Nepali work permit expired in September. Suspicious and scared of the Child’s abilities, he had visited the social worker in Chilas, who told him his “hypothetical” situation would result in potential criminal charges and a long stay in an orphanage for the Child. The strange situation with his “talents” would certainly make it difficult to find a foster home.

He was out of options. Go back to Razor Crest and risk the client learning about the child, loose the Child if he stayed in hiding. So Din did what he did best.

He finished the job.

He went back to Razor Crest Adventures. Greef Karga happened to be at the Chilas office, and he directed him to the Client, who turned out to be a thin Swedish-sounding man who claimed to be a doctor who moved to Chilas with his Pakistani wife twenty years ago. 

“If I-had-the Cargo-what would you do with it?” Din asked the client, sitting in an elegant compound on the outskirts of Chilas. “Why would you care?” the Client asks him, taking a large bite of his mutton karahi. They were speaking in German for some reason, which Din could piece together passably.

Din stumbled over his words. “This isn’t the type of job I normally do. I just want to make sure my back is covered.” “Alright, that’s fair. You don’t need to worry. Payment is linked to a community organization in the city center and I have five men willing to vouch for you doing a speech on foriegn mountaineers’ community involvement yesterday. My secretary will vouch we’re old friends who used to work together in Bern.”

His heart pounded and time seemed to slow for a minute. If the commune still existed, what would he do?

The commune didn’t exist anymore. It was in bits and pieces, four or five broken people left in different parts of the world, and he needed money.

“The Child is in my flat.”

After he was paid he had enough money to go back to Switzerland, but he went to see the Armorer instead.

She helped him refurbish his supplies and they spent several long glorious days drinking chai and reminiscing. 

On the last day before he was due to go back to Switzerland he came back to the Armorer’s home from a walk and found two people who had spent a few months at the commune when he was a child.

It felt just like old times. He didn’t remember the tall blond man, but the younger woman who was small in stature and had a Chinese accent. Either way, he couldn’t place them exactly due to the face coverings.

They sat for hours discussing the 1987 commune crownings. When the visiting couple prepared to go to sleep they ended the conversation by politely asking him about his life and where he had been working. He made something vague up about the Everest tours and working side jobs off season.

“I hope you say strictly above board”, the woman said. “There are some bad people around, especially the Empire. I’ve heard they’re pretty active in Chilas right now. That’s where you were right?” As the conversation went on, Din started to wonder if the Client worked for the Empire. He knew it was a possibility when he took the job, and he knew the empire was ruthless, but what kind of a Mandalorian was he if he turned his back on an innocent?

“You took a job for them, didn’t you? You fucking fake.” The female Mandalorian can read his hesitation well.

He shook his head. “We do what we must to survive.”

“I don’t know if you ever were a Mandalorian”. “As if you ever joined!” She stands up to face him and pulls out a knife.

“Stop”. The Armorer stands up. “This is not the way of Mandalore.”

After she calmed them all down, Din made his excuses and exchanged his ticket to Switzerland for a train pass to Chilas.

The Clients’ commune was abandoned, so he executed plan B.

He called Greef from a dinky internet cafe. “I’m not sure I’ll be back next season” was what he started the conversation with. “I had something go wrong.” Greef made him join an encrypted server and then told him all of Razo Crest adventures had trackers for the Child.

This was unexpected.

“Was that the job that went wrong?” Greef asked, his voice strangely soft. “You made a risky move, going off book, but you made it back with the cargo eventually. Take a few weeks if you need it and then keep working jobs.”

“That wasn’t the job that went wong, but do you happen to know what happened to the cargo?” Greef shook his head. “It’s better if you don’t ask questions.” That sealed it. He agreed to take another job next month and made some small talk about the election in Thailand and how it would impact their business.

By the time Greef logged off Din had hacked into Greef’s private system. Greef was good but he wasn’t CIA trained.

The next day he found the makeshift basement clinic where he child was in a tiny back room. He had to fight off several dealers who were obviously Empire workers serving guard but he beat them-barely.

The Child cooed when he saw him. “I’m sorry”, Din said and handed him his plastic ball.

Once he had erased the clinic’s security footage,he called in his last two favors from his CIA days, one, for a spot on a flight to China, and two, for a Climbing permit in Kaosheng. 

Then he told Greef he was going to climb K2 from the Chinese side.

No one would follow him there. That climb was a death sentence with his level of experience, and the Empire would take weeks to bribe a good enough climber to come after him.

That was alright. He knew something they didn’t.


	4. K2 part two, or Going to Gasherbrum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title loosely inspired by the Mountain Goats' "Going to Georgia."

Din wasn’t actually going to K2. He was exhausted after his climbs that season and he wasn’t stupid.

He was just going to hide someplace near there while he figured out how to visit the Buddhist retreat center in Mongolia he liked, where he would pray and figure out what to (actually) do.

Right now, they were sleeping rough in a tiny village a few hours from K2. He hadn’t talked to the villagers much, but they seemed stressed out.

It was early September by then. He had a short-term visa as a part of the favor he’d pulled to get here. He slept alright, and took the Child on walks to feed the stray chickens that wandered around the village square. There was a local store that sometimes doubled as a restaurant, and it was there he met Cara Dune.

Cara was a stocky Vietnamese-French woman who could throw darts better than he could. She was a nurse, she said, working with a remote medical team. She was clearly packing, so there had to be more to the story. 

The day after he met Cara, one of the village elders (was that the right term here?) offered him a job.

Guess he just had one of those faces. 

The details of the job were as follows: there was a regional crime lord who an elder had pissed off, and they were paying someone to ruin most of the village’s crops. The elder had managed to deduce when the raid was coming, but they didn’t have many weapons and they probably wouldn’t have a fair fight.

The job would be easy but he needed to keep himself distracted from thinking about the Child. Finding out more about Cara would be fun and would ensure she wasn’t someone secretly tracking him. “It will be easier if I have a second person”, he told the elder, and they gave him money to hire a second person.

Cara laughed in his face. “I’m a nurse.” He pulled a face. “No, you’re not.” 

She looked around to make sure no one was nearby. “What do you want to know for?” He told her about the job.

“I’ll do it”, she told him. “But not for you. I want to help the village.”

Din nodded. “I can respect that. I always want to make sure my travels benefit the environment, the economy, the culture. Mountaineering wouldn’t exist without Sherpas.”

Cara chuckled. “I don’t think you’re just a mountain guide, Din.” “And I don’t think you’re just a nurse.” “We’ll have to agree to disagree then,” she told him, and pulled on her coat to leave.

They’re setting up defenses for the night the raid is supposed to happen when Cara noticed something might be wrong.

“Din!” She called from the fence. Din set down the wood he was fixing into a barricade and came to see what was going on. He swore loudly and glanced toward the elders, who were supposed to be helping them. “Is that an AT-ST?” She nodded, face tight.

More evidence she wasn’t actually a nurse. 

“They can’t go up against that. We can’t go up against it. I’m not sure it’s actually legal to have that.”

He sighed. “Well, they can’t just leave.” “I think they have to.” “Look, I don’t know how much you know about that AT-ST, Cara.” 

The sun was going down, and he could just see the outlines of the mountains through the crisp clean air.

She pulled up her sleeve suddenly so he could see a Rebel tattoo. “I know plenty. I was in Sudan for fifteen years.”

Suddenly, he felt safe. The Rebels were a nonpartisan peace group that protected citizens, but they all had military backgrounds. Most importantly, they would never align with the Empire.

Maybe he could tell her about the Child.

There was a noise in the distance, and he began to worry about the Child. He’d left him with some toys in his parked tent within eyesight. 

Behind him, Cara was talking to the elders, trying to convince them to give up. “Can we help?”, one of them asked. She hesitated. Din thought back to how he taught new trekkers on their first acclimation trips on Everest, and he had an idea.

They fixed the traps in the rice paddies easily enough, and huddled in the hut of a kind villager named Omera, taking turns on a watch of sorts as they listened to the explosions that signaled the AT-ST was becoming unoperational.

Everything seemed to be going well, except for the fact that he had to tell both Cara and Omera about the Child.

“Who is this?” Omera had cried, hugging the Child, who hugged her joyously back. Its’ ears seemed to be bigger than a normal child’s, Din thought. “Do you climb mountains, little one? You’re so smart”. The Child batted her earrings, and she laughed.

Cara seemed more suspicious. “I didn’t know you had a kid, Din.” “I don’t. He’s a foundling.” “He doesn’t look Chinese.” Cara said. “China is diverse, Waigaorun.” Omera said, teasingly. “He’s a little darling.”

The Child played with Omera’s daughter as the night went on, and went to sleep easier than normal.

The next day, after a long celebratory meal, Din was yet again distracted. He tried to think of the Way of Mandalore, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that the Child belonged here. Omera was a widower, he’d learned, and she seemed to adore the Child. The village was remote and he was in the area sometimes for treks. He could pay for protection. The village was accepting of the Child even though it was strange. It was a Child. It needed a family, which was more than he could give it.

As he ruminated, he, Omera, and the Child were at a table nibbling at the rest of the dumplings as the meal ended. There was a movement, and a man in black stepped out from behind the tree. He had a gun, and he aimed it at the Child. Din jumped forward and tackled the man, who dropped the gun and pulled a knife out of his sleeve.

Din punched him in the stomach but the man didn’t even flinch.

They disabled him because Cara jumped on him from behind.

The village assumed that the stranger was working for the same people who had the AT-ST. Din knew better.

He packed up the next day and abandoned his plan to hide in the shadow of K2. On the way out of China, he would plant some rumors about going to Gasherbrum.

Cara found him as he was putting the last of his climbing rope in his rucksack. “I just came to say goodbye”, she said, and then the Child levitated the entire rucksack and started to float.

“What the fuck?” Cara screamed. “Be quiet” Din hissed. “What is he doing??” Cara was still agitated. “Sit down”, Din said, grasping at her wrist. “I can’t fucking sit down, Din. I don’t think that’s a human child.”

Din had never considered that possibility.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope to post a chapter each weekend of January-I have a loosely organized format for the whole story at least, so will try to stick to a schedule.


	5. Tien Shan Din

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am not Buddhist, but according to my limited internet research Bhikkhu is the Buddhist equivalent of a monk and Bhikkhuni is the Buddhist equivalent of a nun. 
> 
> I may have taken liberties with geography for the Mongolian desert and mountains to be close to each other (or the time it takes to travel between the two)-I didn't 100 percent research this.
> 
> If I have made any of the above dramatically inaccurate please let me know- this was quite hard to write and thus I spent less time on research than normal.
> 
> TW: character death by gunshot, discovering a dead body, vehicle explosions, kidnapping, briefly kidnapping an alien child

Din and the Child spent one of the worst weeks of their (well, Din’s) life in Mongolia, near Tien Shan Din. Alright, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Given that Din has spent the last couple of months climbing two eight thousand meter mountains, stealing from his boss, (assumedly) losing his job, and (maybe) meeting an alien, it may not be the worst week of his life, but it feels like it.

First of all, the Child floated almost constantly. The Bhikkhu at the retreat center weren’t phased by the fact that Din was traveling with a small strangely colored child, but he was pretty sure that other villagers might. He made the child a tiny tin cradle and bought him a tiny craft doll in a market. When he sat, meditating, the tiny tin cradle silently floated next to him while the Child stared at the desert. You could just barely see Tien Shan Din. Maybe it was phased that they weren’t really in the mountains anymore. When he tried to stuff his crampons deeper in his rucksack, the child would float over, unzip the rucksack and grab for them.

Din wished he had more sympathy in the past for parents.

Second, he was picking up shifts packing and unpacking produce in the village market, which certainly felt like grunt work to him. He didn’t really have many options after receiving an email from Razor Crest terminating his employment and telling him they’d reported the hack of Greef’s server for the Nepali police. 

He’d started out the week thinking that he’d make enough money and clear his head by meditation to really figure out what to do next but it got worse.There was a wannabe mountaineer following him around.

Toro Calican was a spoiled British playboy, fresh out of Cambridge, who had followed a girlfriend to Mongolia. Din had come across him trying to charm a weaver into free rugs for a friend who “loves those colors”. Once Toro realized Din was foreign and spoke a little Mongolian, he had asked him what he was doing in western Mongolia, and ever since Din said he was a mountaineer called David the younger man was under the impression they were fast friends.

Din thought he was annoying.

On Wednesday, he had gone to the market feeling lighter than ever, because Peli Motto, a visiting Bhikkhuni who rode a motorcycle, had taken a liking to the Child and asked to watch  
him for the day. He was hoisting a box of rugs when he heard Toro’s voice behind him. “Morning, Din. Have you ever been to the desert?” He sighed and put the box down. “Morning, Toro. I’ve been once or twice. Why do you ask?” Toro stepped close to Din. Too close. “Do you know anything about Razor Crest?”

He picked up the box again. “I used to work for them.” Toro stepped even closer. “I want to take a real job for them. I’ve got a guy who knows someone, and I can make enough money for the year in a week on a desert tracking expedition.I’ll never have to go back to my fucking parents for money.” “That’s stupid. You’re going to get killed.”

Din picked up the box of rugs and walked away. Toro followed him. “Come on man, I could do it even faster with you.” “No.” Toro glared. “I’m going to find Fennec Shand.” Din set down the box again, grabbed him by the collar, and hissed “You do not know what you’re getting into. Fennec’s one of the best assassins out there. She’s had bounties out on her head since 1982. You think she won’t expect someone coming to look for her?”

Toro didn’t seem ruffled. “I know the job’s details, and I think it would be fun.” Din still thought that Toro would die, but he was wondering how much money was in the job. With two of them they might stand a chance against Fennec, and he’d certainly make more than working in the market. It probably wasn’t a good idea, but then again, when had he ever had good ideas?

“If I help you” he said slowly, “I need half the money, and I need you to swear you’ll take the credit with Razor Crest. Don’t tell anyone you had help.” “Toro shrugged. “That sounds fine.”

In the space of the next two hours, Din resigned from the market, asked Peli to watch the Child overnight, and jumped into a jeep with Toro. For the next couple of hours, his biggest annoyance was Toro’s preference for early 70s British pop music. He tried to concentrate on the pile of maps they had pinpointing where Fennec might be hiding.

Din really enjoyed being in the desert. It was very different from the mountains-warm and open, but the challenges of being off kilter were the same-gentle brown nothingness taking over his peripheral vision, and his challenge was just to survive. You could really think out here, but he was distracted by Toro shouting “Shit.” He looked up and saw a group of Tuskens riding near them, slightly to the west. “Why are you shouting?” he muttered. This was going to be harder than he thought.

Din had to trade half of Toro’s supplies to get the Tuskens off their backs. “You need to get used to paying them off”, he told Toro firmly as they drove off. Kid wasn’t going to last a week after this job.

A few kilometers after the Tuskens they spotted a jeep half covered in sand. Toro, not yet having learned his lesson about interacting with unknown encounters in the desert, immediately pulled over to check it out. He stared, then swore again. “That was probably the last person who tracked her. Fennec’s brutal. Women are unpredictable like that.”

The jeep in front of them held a Tusken raider, clearly shot. The whole back of the vehicle was covered in blood.

Given his last comment, Din wondered briefly if he should just leave Toro with Fennec once they found her.  
“He’s clearly gone, just leave him”, he told the younger man. Toro walked closer to the vehicle. Behind them, their jeep exploded.

“Why don’t you ever just listen?” he groubled to Toro. They’d been thrown a long distance from the jeep and were both fairly bruised. Toro’s nose was bleeding and Din thought he might have a black eye. Toro groaned. “I just want to go home now. Would you come back tomorrow?”

“Look, it would take five hours to get back if we leave now-look how dark the sky is getting.” Din thought they might be in for a desert storm. And besides, he’d changed the bet with himself. Toro was going to last a day without him max. “We should set up camp after we get away from here.” Toro’s mouth dropped open.

Din sighed. “Toro, you have to listen to me. I’ve been doing this for years. “ Was the idiot trembling? Toro whimpered, and pointed, and Din whirled around to see Fennec Shand pointing an assault rifle at his forehead. 

“Oh come on.” he said, trying to appear calm. “You have to have more subtlety than this.” Fennec was a tiny South Asian woman dressed in black, who appeared to carry no baggage, but had several additional guns on her person. She wore a smirk proudly. “Amateur.” she said in English. “Now, tell me who you are working for, and we’ll make this quick.” Toro was still speechless. Din pretended not to understand her, and she switched to Russian, then Mandarin. When neither of them responded she sighed in frustration. “Oh well”, she said in Mongolian, pointing the gun straighter. 

Before Din had time to think, Toro jumped at her, knocking the gun aside with a well-placed kick. Din was surprised Toro had been successful, but he leaped for Fennec’s other side. She got a couple stabs at Toro with one of her knives, but they managed to keep her down after Din wrestled her arms down and Toro sat on her legs. 

Panting, Din said “You’re an idiot.” Toro was grinning. “I told you we could do it.” Fennec spat at them. “Good luck getting out of her.” Toro, still high on success, repled “Din’s climbed ten eight-thousanders, he can survive your traps.” She smirked back. “I’ll be sure to say some words at your funeral.”

That seemed bold and out of character for an assassin, but Toro was right. If there were more explosives around them he (DIn could make it) would die.

They tied Fennec to the Tusken jeep and Din hiked off to see if their jeep was still operable. It was.  
But behind him, he didn’t hear the conversation between Fennec and Toro, just the gunshot. He ran back off without the jeep. “What did you do?” he shouted. Toro, who had clearly just fatally shot Fennec, was barely breathing. “You didn’t tell me you betrayed the Empire or that you were running from Razor Crest.”

“Why would I tell you that, you idiot?” He checked Fennec’s vitals, but she was gone. “Alright, alright, I was just shocked. Anyway, I’ll just tell Razor Crest I couldn’t find her. She offered me money to help kill you, but I’m not going to turn on a friend.”

Toro was going to last a few hours. Not even a day. Razor Crest will have his head.

They spent the night in separate tents. When Din woke up, Toro was gone.

His prints are the only ones at the scene, because Din is careful, but he scrubs the scene and heads back anyway. He won’t report Fennec or Toro to the authorities because he could end up on the wrong person’s radar. And if he is, the Child is too.

He used his negotiation skills to hitch a ride with another group of raiders. When he arrived at Peli’s flat, another Bhikkhuni was screaming. It didn’t take him much time to break down the door. Toro is in the center of the room, a gun pointed at Peli, who is holding the Child.

Toro smirked in a way all too reminiscent of Fennec. “Do you know how much the bounty on your head is?” he said. “And now I’ll get three bounties-one for you, one for it,” he gestured at the Child, “And one for Fennec. My mate’s on his way out now. Can’t believe you bought that idiot act.”

Din feels weak, like he’s just gotten stuck in a bad place while on the descent of a climb. He wanted to hide the stun guns for longer, but he’s only really thinking about the Child, who can’t defend itself and only wants to play with plastic balls in the sunshine. “I don’t think it’s an act”, he said, stepping back. He used the split second Toro scoffed at him, stunned, to throw the gun. He jumped in once Toro was down. He woke up quickly though, and Din shot without hesitating.

He was numb for the next few days. He reported Toro to the local police (Peli hid the Child for an additional day without question), saying he was just walking by the flat. Then he disguised himself as a Tusken, found Toro’s “mate”, who seemed to be an ordinary local man, told him he had gone on the job, and collected half the money. 

Once he’d given it to Peli for her troubles, he did something he’d never done before. He told the Child they were going to Switzerland (it was more interested in the tiny wooden toys he bought from a carver in the market) and got on a plane to show another living soul (he still wasn’t sure if the Child was human) his half finished cottage.

He was just tired now. And he didn’t know how to feel, because if there was one thing he learned when the commune disbanded, caring for someone else was a weakness. But he did care for the Child, who he called kid, and who he apparantly cared enough to kill for.


	6. Eiger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you're still here, thank you! As a reward, celebrate this huge win for indigenous mountaineering with me! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/16/nepalese-team-makes-first-successful-winter-ascent-of-k2
> 
> TW: less than ideal mountaineering etiquette (you don't generally leave other people on mountains unless it's life or death), mountaineering accidents, possibly incorrect Swiss geography

Din was exhausted, but he was happy the kid was happy.

Flying back from Asia with a normal, human toddler was hard enough. Having an alien toddler who turned invisible was worse. He’d been panicking about how hard it would be to cross the border into Kazakhstan a few days after the Toro debacle when he turned around and didn’t see the Child. He swore, and the Child’s ball flew directly into his face. The little fucker could aim. He reached out carefully, felt the Child’s rough little toddler-sized windbreaker, and looked at his hands grasping thin air.

He’d adopted (he used that word loosely) an alien baby.

Figuring out the Child’s invisibility wasn’t hard. He could do it on command, and had a rough sense of time. Din just gave him a cookie every hour so he’d keep the ruse up while they were on the flight.

They were in his cottage near Matterhorn now. He was mostly done with construction now, and as long as he kept the Child away from the dining room or deck they would be fine.

He still wasn’t sure what they would do about money. Then again, money was the least of his concerns. He was spending a lot of time looking for reputable resources on aliens online.

His next job came from the Child.

He was trying to plant some tomatoes in the spacious garden by the house when he looked up and the Child wasn’t next to him. 

Din didn’t really have a concept of parental figures. In Mandalore, all the adults took care of all the children. If he didn’t do his homework, someone would notice. If he fell down while playing, he could run to anyone, because everyone loved and cared for the children. Of course, he’d had a favorite. How could he not love the man who had rescued him from a war-torn Peruvian orphanage? Still, he wasn’t really sure if parents could have favorites, or if they just cared for the children they came across. His examples for parental figures had been foster care and Mandalore, so..

He had to stop these internal ramblings whenever he thought about what being a parent would be like. He started to think about a strategy for finding the Child.

It turned out to be easier than he thought, because the kid was in the forest less than a quarter kilometer from the cottage, chasing a fox.

“Kid. You have to tell me where you’re going.” He said, picking the Child up. He’d bought it some new sets of clothing from a bougie kids boutique in Zermatt. It seemed to like neutral colors best.

The Child cooed and touched his mask. “I don’t know, use telepathy or whatever you have in that little strange brain of yours.” Then the Child cooed and pointed and he realized he may have been following the short man standing nearby. The Child seemed intrigued by his wild grey beard.

“How do you know where I live?” Ran Malk smirked. “I have my ways.” Din was pissed that someone from the life he wanted to leave behind knew where he’d be retiring. “What do you want?” “I want to know if you need work, if you’re living in Switzerland full time. Also, what is that?”

“None of your business” Din said, holding the Child away from Ran, who he hadn’t trusted since the Incident in Columbia in 1990. “And what kind of work?”

He was going to be a terrible parent.

He was going to have to move.

He didn’t feel as sad as he thought at the idea of leaving Switzerland. If the kid needed it, well, that’s just how life was.

So, because of the Child, he was going to the Eiger for a day. He had deliberated for a while on who to ask to watch the Child, and finally had decided that the tiny Catholic Monastery about half an hour away from the cottage was his best bet.

Ran was helping a low level assassin who’d pissed off someone in Italy cross Switzeland to France, but to stay off the radar they were taking an off the radar route. Which included climbing over the Eiger. They thought they should probably have a climber, and so, Din was invited.

Din’s team for the climb was as follows: Migs Mayfield, a London grifter who moonlighted as a hacker (Din had no idea how he’d ended up wandering through Switzerland and didn’t want to ask), Burg, an angry oddly accented man who said he was Russian but appeared to have trained Jiu Jitsu in Brazil, a rogue South African diamond mining expedition pilot named Zero, and Xi’an, an Indonesian who claimed to be a computer scientist but knew an odd amount about money laundering for a computer scientist. Xi’an and Qin were siblings. Din didn’t know any further backstory than that and was smart enough to not dig further.

He thought the team was pretty capable and the job would be easy, until Xi’an decided they would climb up the North face and head down the other side before hiking towards France.

“There are a lot of other ways we can do this”, Din said for the third time. Xi’an glared at him. “All those other routes have too many people on them. We’re doing this to stay off the radar. And we won’t be on it for long, just for these two-the crack and the traverse of the gods, whatever those are.” 

“I still don’t think we should do it,” Din said, but the team was already walking away, and he decided they would have less of a chance of dying if he went with them. 

They were halfway up the top of the Difficult Crack when Zero stumbled. Everyone seemed disoriented and was listening intently to Din’s instructions. Din was feeling like the worst climbing guide in the word. He shouldn’t be taking non-experienced climbers up here. When Zero almost fell, he panicked, and rearranged their order so he could walk with Zero. He almost entirely missed Zero trying to trip him.

“Oh no, that was an accident, I am so sorry.” Zero said pathetically. He said he was just nervous. They kept going, and the climb made more sense as they finished the Crack and began the Traverse of the Gods. Din loved climbing the Traverse. It was just him pressed flat against a mountain so steep it felt like he could leap off into the sky, and if he did leapt, then he would fall and there would be nothing. That amount of power or danger was amazing.

His teammates didn’t look like they were having as much fun.

They were about halfway through when a voice shouted from behind them. Qin looked terrified. He started swearing. “What’s the New Republic doing here?” She hissed. Qin was clinging frantically to his ropes. “I don’t know, I don’t know.” he whimpered. Berg was less hesitant. “Well, might as well get one bounty”, he said, lunging at Din.

Din had thought fewer people would be tracking him outside of Asia, but that apparently wasn’t true. He stepped forward quickly, glad he was so quick with Crampons, and avoided Berg’s lunge. Berg wasn’t so lucky. He caught himself, but dropped his crampons. Din left the group hanging and kept going, his adrenaline keeping him focused on the task at hand. A group of well equipped climbers intent on Qin was starting the traverse behind them.

He had just finished the Traverse when he realized Ran was still climbing behind him. “What are you doing?” he called. “I’m not chasing out after you, man” Ran called. When he was out of earshot of the group, he yelled to Din “I have bounty out against Qin. My goal was to make sure he never made it to France. They’ll never make it off the mountain. We did it. I can pay you now.”

When he reached Din, he pulled out a gun. Din started climbing faster. When he reached the Spider, Din started to free climb and Ran stopped, aware it was stupid to keep going without Din’s skills. The New Republic climbers were still chasing Ran, and Din kept climbing.

Din climbed the rest of the mountain alone, descended alone, and filled with guilt, went to the Monastery. There was one place left to go. He would abandon the cottage, and seek solace near Mandalore. He didn't want to, but he'd do it for the kid.

Mayfield, Burg, and Xi’an made it off the mountain, but the guilt was still there for Din, who didn’t know they made it.


	7. Annapurna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men." Maurice Herzog.
> 
> This chapter has no mountains, but I recently finished this book about Annapurna-our history really depends on who tells it! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/427334.True_Summit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter makes sense. 
> 
> Trigger warnings: Graphic descriptions of violence, gun fights

“Seriously. Kid, stop.” The Child picked up his climbing helmet again, dropped it, and squealed. “You’re going to dent it. Stop. Play with your ball instead.” He moved the helmet away from the Child. It floated the helmet back to him and grinned happily.

Din sighed.

They were back in Asia again. 

He liked Asia, but he’d been there for better reasons than helping Greef Karga. They’d been ready to go to Argentina where he hoped to settle near the ruins of Mandalore when he got a heavy encrypted email. Razor Crest didn’t formally exist anymore, Greef Karga said, because the Client had both physically and cyber attacked them in a fit of anger. He wants the Child, Greef wrote, and he’ll-they’ll-do anything to get it. You’ll never be safe. Din knew Greef would do whatever he needed to in order to protect his assets, but the plan he had proposed in the email made sense.

He asked that Din and the Child return to Asia, where Greef would strategically spread the news that they were back. The Client would likely be there himself, he now trusted few people to complete the job. Greef would take care of the Client, and the Empire would move on once they’d cut the head off the snake so to speak. The Empire was far more pragmatic, the Client was obsessed with getting the Child.

Din firmly believed Greef would double cross him, but if the Client was out to get Razor Crest he would likely want to get rid of the Client. Greef said he could bring back-up too, and he felt comfortable with that.

Although to be fair, there were few people he trusted right now. He’d messaged Cara on Whatsapp, who was now in Thailand. She’d happily agreed. Always down to fight the Death Star, she said, referencing the street name sometimes used for the Empire among the Resistance.

He’d also sent some feeler messages to Kuill once their flight had landed in Pakistan. He wasn’t sure if he’d make it but he said he owed Din.

So here they were, in a backwoods hostel in a village outside of Chilas, the Child happily annoying him while he wondered nervously if his plan would work.

In front of him, the Child put the helmet on his head, squishing down it’s ears and cooing happily. Someone knocked on the door. It was Cara. Once she’d stepped inside carefully, she hugged Din and cooed at the Child, who laughed and hugged her ankles. 

“Thank you for coming”, Din said. She laughed. “Like I’d pass up an opportunity to take shots at the Death Star.”

Kuill arrived a few minutes later, with IG behind him. Din looked at Cara as they came in. “He’s not supposed to be here.” As she moved forward, Kuill stood protectively in front of IG, who bowed awkwardly. “I apologize.” He said. “I have since taken the Oath of the Nurse. I will protect the Child. I was wrong.”

Din thought the Oath of the Nurse was weird, but it was a thing, just like the Mandalorians or other communes. Communes are so strange, he thought. The Jedi were the strangest, not the Oath of the Nurse.

Cara just shrugged. 

The Child went to wave and coo happily at both Kuill and IG.

They were meeting Greef at a cafe in the business district, and once they’d made an appearance Greef would let them know when the Client was taken care of.

They walked to the cafe instead of taking a taxi. When they were two blocks away, and Cara was pointing to a sign in the distance for the cafe reading “Nevarro”, he felt something slam into him from behind. The small, flying reptile that had hit him seemed like a cross between a turtle and a dinosaur. It flailed to bite his hand, and the group saw dozens more coming towards them. The people around them were staring. “What are these???” Kuill shouted. IG had fared the worst of them. They were all running as fast as they can towards the cafe but IG had a large number of bites on his face. As they made it to the cafe he started to sway. 

Cara caught him before he fell, and they ducked in the alleyway by the cafe to regroup before going to meet Greef. They all knew the importance of a united front. IG was gasping to breathe. “We shouldn’t go in without all the backup” Cara said, “And I think IG needs the hospital. The Client must have some kind of crazy mutant reptile experiment lab. I wouldn’t put it past him.” “Turtles are amphibians.” Kuill whispered, as he bent over IG, who was now slumped on the ground, and tried to get him to drink water.

“Well, I can’t reschedule. If Greef isn’t screwing us over, the Client will know something is up if we change the times.” They looked at each other for a moment. It was rare for Din not to know what to do, but he really didn’t. He was so afraid he would be wrong and the Child would suffer for it. Is this what parenting was? He only wanted the best for the kid.

Kuill was the one who finally broke the silence. “Um, Din? What’s he doing?” Everyone looked. The Child was waving it’s oddly colored hands over IG’s face. The bites were closing up, the splattered blood that had run over his face was disappearing. He was breathing slower.

“Kid?” Din murmured nervously. The Child didn’t look at him. “Kid?” IG finally swallowed a drink of water and sat up. “What were those things that attacked us?” When he saw that everyone around him was staring, open-mouthed, he cleared his throat and asked “What happened?”

“Din’s kid is magic, that’s what.” Kuill said. “Din’s kid isn’t human.” Cara was blunt, that was for sure. Din, panicking at the implications of everyone knowing about the Child’s powers, said quickly that they should move on. 

They went into the cafe, which was empty. Karga was drinking a cup of coffee. “What took you so long?” he said. “Did you know we would be attacked?” Din asked him. “Did you know the Client has flying turtle monsters?” “The Client has a lot of stuff. Those things are dangerous.” “Like we don’t know.” Kuill scoffed, emboldened. Din wished he would stop talking. “Din’s kid can heal us though.” 

Fuck.

Din shifted so the Child, riding half hidden in his rucksack, wasn’t visible.

“He can what?”

“He can do a lot of things.” Din said carefully and noncommittally.

Greef met his eyes for a second, then fired a shot from a gun he pulled out of nowhere. Behind Din, a man who had just entered the shop collapsed, the bullet having met it’s mark.

“We have to move quickly.” Greef said as he stood up and holstered the weapon. “I can’t just turn it over if it’s really that powerful.” “Who was that? You were going to betray us?” Cara was faking shock, Din was sure.

“Of course I was. We need to get out of the city, then we can regroup. You can believe that I’m on your side. With that power I can go beyond a simple deal with the Client.”

They didn’t have any choice.

Greef went over the new plan quickly. He and Cara would bring a captured Din to the Client’s nearby hideout, and Kuill would smuggle the Child to a friends’ flat, which was a new and unknown location. Once the Client was convinced they had the child they would go off the radar to a hideout somewhere in Morocco which was near rival territory for the Empire. They’d work out a deal with Greef there. IG would go back to the hostel during their plan to rest, as he was still very shaken up.

The next couple of hours went quickly. Din was numb. The Client was waiting for them in the back of a dingy apartment building with three masked henchmen. “Where's the little one?” he asked Greef calmly. “We have him in a car outside.” Greef was a good liar. 

“He put up a bit of a fuss.” The Client started, then shugged. “If you say so. You’ve always come through for me.” Then, through the narrow back door behind them, five men burst in, multiple AK-47s in tow. “Moff Gideon is on his way.” one of them said, and then he shot the Client.

Din, worried for the Child, didn’t react as quickly as he should, but Cara cut his zipties with a knife and they ran. If Moff Gideon was involved this was worse than they thought.

They did manage to find another back alley to hide in but adrenaline was high. “What are we doing?” Din moaned. “Karga was in it all along. The Client knew about everything.” “I think they’d assume we would head back to the business district. We’ll have a bit before they come this way.” She looked at Din thoughtfully, far more grounded in the moment than he was. “I learned about big communes in the 60s when I joined the Resistance. That’s how I knew you were a Mandalorian. But I wonder if the Jedi would know something about the Child. Something weird is going on here. The Client’s monsters prove that.”

Before they could continue the conversation, Din’s phone rang. The service was spotty. He could hear gunshots, and shouting, and something about the kid. Then he could hear Kuill shout “Moff Gideon has the kid!” and then there was another gunshot and the line went dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the hang-end. I'm finally out of quarantine (and tested negative!) but the next chapter will be up next weekend.


	8. Cerro Torre

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this isn't too much like crack fic. Thank you for putting up with this.
> 
> Trigger warning: aircraft explosions, fire, graphic descriptions of violence (not very graphic?), Character death, Jedi as Roswell alien fanatics, bad timelines, and differentiation between winter/autumn mountain climbs

They had been in hiding for nearly twenty-four hours. The sewers of Pakistan weren’t an ideal hiding place, but Cara and Din were desperate. They’d talked for a few hours earlier in the day, when they still had hope they would win, and they’d figured out a few things.

Cara didn’t know who Moff Gideon was, but Din did. It was hard to forget the man who had supervised the last attack on Mandalore. It was new that somehow he was tangled in with the Empire, but it didn’t surprise Din. The man was evil.

They’d also talked about the Jedi. Din knew two versions of the story of the Jedi. The first one, commonly told at community dinners while at Mandalore, was of dangerous alien-seeking rogues who tried to interfere with the warrior missions of Mandalore. Shortly after he’d aged out of foster care and before he’d been accepted to train for the CIA he had studied up on cults and religious groups considered strange or dangerous. The Jedi were few and little known. They believed they had strange powers and thought they could communicate with aliens. He’d always been a bit skeptical of the Mandalorian’s stories about the Jedi as a shy little foundling kid, in awe of these strange people who were willing to take care of him without getting anything in return. So, after he had been asked to quit CIA training he had put the Jedi out of his mind and hadn’t thought about it since. He hadn’t asked Cara-mysterious as she was about her past careers and travels with the Resistance-how she knew about the Jedi. 

He’d been more concerned with her point, which was that the Child behaved like the Jedi did. Invisibility, floating objects, communication that wasn;t always verbal-those were all Jedi traits. “Thing is,” Din had said, as they split their last energy bar, “if you’re right, it means aliens are real.” And just when his life couldn’t have gotten any stranger.

At this point in the night though, he kind of hoped aliens were real, because then there might be a point in spending nearly twenty hours hiding in a sewer. He was numb. The Child was dead or in captivity. He had failed. 

He hoped the Child knew he cared about him-”Din.” Cara elbowed him. “Snap out of it.” “I’m sorry”, he rasped, “I’m just worried about the kid.” Cara didn’t stop to acknowledge his worries. “Can you hear that?” There was a rumbling of feet in the distance.

He exhaled and swore. “Will they actually check the sewers?” “They’re Empire. They’ll check everywhere.”

They started packing up their stuff to move. As the voices grew closer, the conversation clearly showed that the Empire workers were the ones chasing them, and the feeling of being trapped grew bigger in his chest. He wasn’t used to this, being trapped low and underground instead of high on a mountain.

When he and Cara were nearly ready to ready to try to move to a different part of the Sewer, there was a rattle above them, and a scream. There seemed to be an explosion above, then silence. 

In shock, they watched as IG dropped down to greet them, the Child sitting happily in a backpack he wore on his chest. “Long time no see.” IG said. “Or is there some other American movie catchphrase I should say?” Cara, nearly crying, laughed and went to hug him. The Child shrieked happily and held out his arms for Din.

The next thing they knew, there was an additional soldier with a flamethrower in front of them, and then there wasn’t. The Child moved it’s fingers, and the flamethrower was going straight back at the soldier.

What happened next was very fast. Din hadn’t even realized he was injured, and Cara snuck the Child out of the sewers while IG healed his leg, where a bullet had briefly grazed it. “It looks like your face is cut too”, IG said, and Din let him slide off the ski mask to clean and bandage the cuts, because it was real now-these people were his family.

Then, they left Chilas as fast as they could. The Empire was after all of them. But before they did, they sent Kuill back to his monastery-Din didn’t know the Pashto word-for burial. The stones on his grave would read “hero.”

They took passage on a cargo ship to Rome, and from there a flight attendant friend of Cara’s helped them get a flight to Mexico, then Argentina. They told no one they were going to the ruins of Mandalore, except the Armorer. Din let her know via a quick, cryptic text. When they landed in Buenos Aires, he had two texts in response from her. The first was simply an image of a Death Stinger Scorpion-to remind you what you can do, she said-and the second was a single sentence “Take the Child to the Jedi.”

They made camp in the closest village to Cerro Torre for a few weeks while they planned, and one day a package labeled in code-from the Armorer-showed up for Din. It was a jetpack. What does she have planned, Din wondered.  
The day before they were due to leave for the Patagonian ice fields, their last challenge before Cerro Torre and Mandalore, they returned to find their home engulfed in flames. There were only a few seconds to stand in shock, and then the Empire soldiers stepped in around them.

IG was the first to react. The Child hadn’t done anything strange yet, and they didn’t really know if he could control unmitigated fire. “Run”, was all IG said, and they ran. The last thing Din saw was the fire spreading.

At the edge of the village, a helicopter with Empire emblems came into sight overhead. Cara swore. Thinking fast, Din dug around in his rucksack for the expandable jetpack and the explosives he kept for emergencies-just in case he got stock in an avalanche and had to make a small explosion to dig himself out or alert someone to where he was.

The helicopter veered low over them, and he handed the Child to Cara. The Child looked at him, and he hoisted the jetpack on his back and rose up. He could see Gideon in the helicopter right before he stuck the explosive on the bottom of the aircraft.

They had enough supplies to camp deep in the icefields while the public interest over a crime lord’s exploding helicopter subsided. Not much happened during those days. They talked about the future. The mourned for IG and Kuill. Din and the Child watched birds and made breakfast together over the campfire, usually tiny eggs or tortillas. The kid woke him up in the morning by poking him and squealing happily, and Din had never been happier. 

Cara didn’t want to look for the Jedi, so they agreed that after they settled into the ruins of Mandalore and felt safe enough to have a strategy she would consider the text messaged offer Din had the last day they had service. It was from Karga.

Empire defeated. Come back. Was all it said.

Din wouldn’t be going back. He had a family to take care of and Jedi to meet. He hadn’t processed everything that had happened to him as a child, but he would make damn sure it wouldn’t happen to his kid.

On a cold, sunny November day, the last day they could safely climb, Din, his friend, and his son, hiked towards Cerro Torre.


End file.
